HAPPY GILMORE
It's a good question.
Watching it 29 years on from it's original release, I'm not quite sure.
Yes, it's supposed to be a comedy vehicle for 'Saturday Night Live' alum Adam Sandler.
But watching it in the UK and Ireland on Netflix ahead of its hugely hyped sequel on the streaming service, it feels hugely overrated.
Sandler is, of course, Happy Gilmore, a working class lad who aspires to be a NHL hockey player whose love of the game was instilled by his father.
Unfortunately, his dad, played by Louis O'Donoghue, dies when Happy is a kid in a freak spectator accident at a hockey game and he is sent to live with his grandma.
Fortunately, Frances Bay's Grandma Gilmore is a lovely woman, greeting his younger self, played by Donnie MacMillan, dressed like Gene Simmons from Kiss.
In adulthood, Happy struggles to achieve his dream of becoming a hockey player.
While he has a powerful snapshot, he falls every year in trials for the local team because of his poor skating skills and his explosive temper.
His crude sense of humour also lands him in trouble and results in him being kicked out of a series of jobs.
One day, Happy and Grandma's life is turned upside down when Robert Smigel's IRS agent turns up at her door and reveals she owes $270,000 in back taxes.
Giving them 90 days to raise the money or face foreclosure on the family home, Happy vows to raise the money and persuades her to go into a retirement home run by Ben Stiller's orderly Hal while he figures out how to save the family home.
Blind to the reality that Hal is intimidating the residents and running a sweatshop, Happy inadvertently discovers his slapshot might be a real asset in golf when coming across a pair of old clubs once owned by his grandfather.
Challenged in a bet by employees for a removal company to drive a ball further than them, he unleashes a mammoth 400 yard drive not once but twice.
Adopting an unorthodox drive thar sees him run to ball before striking it, he is convinced there may be money to be made hustling golfers at the local driving range.
Happy is discovered there by Carl Weathers' former golf pro Chubbs Petersen who believes the young man has what it takes to be a giant in golf - albeit with a lot of coaching.
Initially rebuffing Chubbs' offer to coach him, Happy changes his mind when the one armed former pro tells him about the money that can be made at the top of the sport.
Entering Happy at the Waterbury Open, Chubbs takes his protege to the tournament and the aspiring ice hockey player pulls off a shock win - landing a berth on the PGA Tour.
Competing on the tour, Happy makes quite an impression in his hockey shirt with his unorthodox swing, mammoth drives, hockey shaped golf clubs, dreadful putting and foul mouthed outbursts.
But he also quickly becomes a fan favourite, with Julie Bowen's PGA public relations manager Virginia Venit persuading director Dennis Dugan's tour commissioner Doug Thompson to overlook his uncouth ways because he's a massive TV ratings hit.
This irritates Christopher McDonald's arrogant pro Shooter McGavin whose achievements as a regular winner on the tour are being overshadowed by Happy's cult following and idiosyncratic behaviour.
This includes hiring Allen Covert's homeless man Otto as his caddie, swearing when things go wrong and wrestling an alligator in one tournament when he realises it was the one that took Chubbs' arm.
With Shooter setting his sights on a golden jacket at the prestigious Tour Championship and Chubbs working on improving Happy's temperament and putting at a crazy/miniature golf attraction, the stage is set for a showdown with the established pro who pulls several underhand moves to undermine the young upstart.
This includes trying to buy Grandma Gilmore's house and getting a fan, Joe Flaherty's Donald to throw Happy off his game during tournaments.
But will Happy persevere and ultimately triumph?
In the 29 years since its release, 'Happy Gilmore' has acquired cult movie status - particularly among pros who have praised McDonald's villain Shooter McGavin.
The Irish golfing legend and three times Major winner Padraig Harrington has done much to enhance its cult status by adopting Happy's unorthodox run and belt it swing as a party trick - initially trying it out on ESPN's 'Sports Science' programme.
The two time Open and USPGA Championship winner demonstrated Happy's swing does indeed achieve extra distance - albeit at the expense of accuracy.
Meanwhile former hockey player turned golf pro Jamie Sadlowski has been dubbed the real life Happy Gilmore because of his ability to hit a ball over 400 yards.
However despite all this love for director Dennis Dugan's original, it's hard to escape the reality that the film suffers, like a lot of Sandler's comedies, from too much excess.
Gags are often shouted by Sandler and are overworked to the point of exhaustion.
Some of the "humour" is very much of its time - would Sandler, his fellow screenwriter Tim Herlihy and Dugan really get away these days with sexist male fantasy dream sequences featuring Bowen in slinky underwear?
Stiller's villain is also over the top.
Nevertheless, Dugan's film is far from being the worst of Sandler's comedies despite its star's often irritating Jerry Lewis schtick.
A lot of this is down to McDonald who built a career playing vain, arrogant, buffoonish villains from Daryl in 'Thelma and Louise' to the casino boss Marty in the current HBO comedy drama series 'Hacks'.
McGavin is a good parody of the stuffed shirt, country club conservatism that exists at the top echelons of US golf.
As for Bowen, she would go on to bigger things too as the highly competitive, daddy's girl Claire Dunphy in 'Modern Family' but she, Weathers, Bay, Stiller, Flaherty, Covert, Dugan, Richard Kiel as Happy's former boss Mr Larsson and Kevin Nealon as the eccentric pro Gary Potter are merely there to play second fiddle to Sandler.
Real life pros, golfing legend Lee Trevino and Mark Lye, sportscaster Verne Lundquist and game show host Bob Barker, in one memorable gag that is typically flogged to death, have cameos.
But they are under no illusion that this is very much Sandler's show.
How the New Yorker reheats one of his most beloved comedy characters 29 years later in Netflix's sequel will be interesting to see.
Can he better the original?
In normal circumstances, that shouldn't be hard - although with Sandler that might be more of a struggle than you'd think.
('Happy Gilmore' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on July 19, 1996)
Comments
Post a Comment